


The Red String of Fate (Sure is An Asshole)

by Hinn_Raven



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast), The Adventure Zone: Balance - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Background Past Lucretia/OFC, F/M, Gen, M/M, Platonic Soulmates, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, background Carey/Killian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 10:12:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13679619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hinn_Raven/pseuds/Hinn_Raven
Summary: The IPRE Crew have been to a hundred different planes over their lifetimes. Some worlds have soulmates, some don't, and every world works differently.And in this final world, they try to make things work.





	The Red String of Fate (Sure is An Asshole)

**Author's Note:**

> Right so the second I realized what Taako's canonical first words to Kravitz were, my old love for soulmate fics was awakened, and I immediately knew that, should I write TAZ fic, that would be the first thing I wanted to write. 
> 
> And then I had the idea of soulmates working differently in different worlds, and so then... this happened. Give me a shout if the embedded images/alt-text don't work, I'm a bit concerned about them.

The thing about soulmates is that not all worlds have them, and all worlds do them differently.

Some worlds have platonic soulmates, some worlds have romantic ones, and some worlds have both. Some worlds have images, some worlds have names, some worlds have first words to each other. There are thousands of worlds, thousands of planes, and the crew of the _Starblaster_ has been to many, over the years.

Magnus Burnsides has never had a romantic soulmate before he arrives on their final world. Broad, rough handwriting scrawls across his arm as they materialize there, reading the words his soulmate will one day say to him. ****His arm says, and Magnus can’t stop eying it.

Merle has had a romantic soulmate in several worlds so far, but he’s only met a few of them. All different people, some that he’s gotten along with, some that he hasn’t. And he left all of them behind, at the end of the day.

Taako’s had a few, over the years, but he’s never met one of them.

Lucretia apparently only ever met hers on the year when everyone died. She doesn’t speak about it; she never speaks about that year at all.

Davenport has never had one, just like Magnus.

When the relics are all scattered, Magnus starts to talk about maybe going to find his soulmate.

Taako has one on this world too, but he is showing no interest in going to find him. **__**is written across his arm in gentle, loopy handwriting.

But then Lup disappears.

Lup and Barry have been soulmates in every world they’d visited that had romantic soulmates. In platonic worlds, they are all connected, but romantically, only Lup and Barry are drawn together.

Something breaks in Barry, when Lup vanishes.

When Lucretia feeds their story to Fisher, when she does what she needs to do, she casts a few other spells. She knows a little divination, and she manages to narrow it down to a place called Raven’s Roost.

She takes Magnus there, and leaves him in the middle of the street. He looks drunk, lying there, and she feels bad about it, but…

Magnus deserves happiness. His soulmate will find him here, she’s sure of it.

She presses a hand against his cheek and wishes him luck, then flees in the cover of night, on to the next step of her adventure, placing her friends in safe locations and building her new organization.

She tries to do the same to Taako, but her scrying bowl cracks every time she tries. She doesn’t know what to make of that. Perhaps he is dead, she thinks, so instead she gives Taako a show, and sets him on the road.

* * *

**1\. Lup**

Lup doesn’t know what to do with how she’s had Barry’s name tattooed on her eight times, Barry’s handprint on her wrist once, and words he’s said to her on her skin twelve times, and he _still hasn’t made a move_.

Sure, she hasn’t either, but that’s different, or at least that’s what she tells herself.

So she reacts in the only way she knows how—she made sure her first words to him every cycle are as ridiculous as possible.

Finally, they get their shit together, but she keeps it up anyways, because it’s a tradition, and it’s fucking hilarious.

Sometimes, it’s a bit more than that though. When he loses her, in the cycles before they’re liches, her own name is scrawled across her skin, as he moves towards her with urgency.

She has her own name, etched onto her skin, a total of twenty times over the years.

* * *

**2\. Magnus**

When he meets Julia, the words on his arm turn grey like the steel she works with. Her handwriting is blocky and legible, a far cry from Magnus’s shaky, unsure scrawl on her arm. His words go from black to red; red like the kerchief he wears around his neck, the one he gives her.

is clearly contrasted with 

There’s a lot of romantic, gooey stuff that people say about soulmates, but honestly, Magnus believes all of it.

Seeing Julia is like the entire world realigning, shifting around him to fit him into her world. He stops travelling, stops getting into fights, settles down and works odd jobs until her father sees him carving one day and takes him on as an apprentice.

Julia has a head of dark curls that she keeps pulled back out of her face with the red kerchief she steals from him. She has a smith’s broad shoulders and a rogue’s clever fingers. She’s bright and brilliant and Magnus knows that even when they’re eighty years old and covered in wrinkles, she will always be the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen.

He courts her, because he wants to do this _right_ , and she courts him right back. They go to the market together, and she puts flowers in his hair and he helps her carry the firewood back to the Hammer and Tongs, grinning the whole while. They watch the fireworks together for the Equinox, she slips raven feathers under his door at Candlenights, and slowly, gradually, they fall in love.

Throughout the rebellion, their words are a reassurance, even when they’re separated. “As long as you have your words, you have each other,” Stephen used to say, a hand on each of their shoulders, in one of those few, snatched moments of togetherness, all too brief, and treasured even more for it.

Magnus fights with an axe, and she guards his back with a heavy hammer, the two of them fighting side by side, back to back.

Her words stay dark and clear on his arm, throughout the rebellion. And when they drive Kailan out, Magnus places his hand on his words on her arm, and she looks at him, exhausted but triumphant, and she smiles.

“Marry me, Jules,” he says. They’re young, but not _that_ young. They’re fools, maybe—they’ve both heard that often enough, trying to dethrone Kailan. But they’re in love, and they’re soulmates, so they rush in.

It’s a happy ending. Magnus builds a gazebo for them to get married in, while Julia smelts down gold coins to forge matching rings for them. Inside his ring, she carefully engraves I think I _really_ lost that barfight, while the inscription on hers reads What are you doing in the middle of the street? The idea, she explains to him, is so that no matter where they go, even if they’re separated, they keep their whole story with them.

Later, when she’s gone, he will read the words that should be on her arm, running along the inside of his ring, his most precious possession, in tiny letters, and he will miss her so much he thinks his heart will break.

But in the moment, she slips that beautiful ring, crafted with all of her love onto his finger, and he cries, and then he returns the favor, and _she_ cries, and then they dance in the gazebo, laughing their way into their happily ever after.

They rebuild Raven’s Roost, and the Tong and Hammers has a business boon. Magnus and Julia talk about kids, talk about dogs, talk about a honeymoon somewhere far away when things are settled down, but for now, they mostly talk about the business and their crafts. They’re both so happy to have put down their weapons, to be working with their tools again.

She tells him to go to the fair in Neverwinter, and he thinks nothing of it. They’re at peace now.

Halfway there, he finds himself screaming, because it feels like his arm is on _fire_ and when he rolls up his sleeve, he sees that Julia’s words are faded. A scar crosses his arm instead, the text barely legible.

He goes back home to bury her and Stephen, and he weeps until there are no tears left. He wears her ring on a chain, and the kerchief she stole from him around his neck once again.

And years later, when the Director offers him a bracer, he pauses. If he’d put it on his right arm, he realizes, it would cover up Julia’s words.

“Generally, we put them on our non-dominant hand,” she says, and there’s something in her eyes that says she understands why he’s hesitating. “But some find… they prefer not to remember.”

“Yeah,” he says grinning. “That’s not me.”

Her smile falters for a moment, then she hands him the bracer. He puts it on the arm without Julia’s words.

* * *

  **3\. Merle**

Merle and Hecuba’s marriage doesn’t break down because they’re not soulmates. He makes _sure_ to tell Maevis and Mookie this, when they get older.

It breaks down because they’re both just _miserable_ and being married to each other just makes it _worse_.

Merle loves the beach, he does, but he’s a cleric, and that means he’s supposed to be _respectable_ now, and have a house and a congregation and a wife and—

So the family sets him up with Hecuba, a widow with a daughter, from a good family, respected by the community.

And it’s _awful_. Merle likes being a cleric, likes talking about Pan, but the community is… _stifling_. It’s stuffy and formal and snobby, and they hate it when he brings the plants to church or tries to lead the congregation in song. He certainly didn’t want to get married, and Hecuba already has a _kid_ , and he’s not remotely equipped for this, to be a _dad_.

He loves Maevis, how couldn’t he? But he’s so far out of his depth here. He has nothing to do except reaching out to a congregation that doesn’t want to hear what he has to say and go home to a wife who’s still mourning her soulmate and was never that interested in him as anything more than a dad for Maevis, which again, he’s not equipped for.

He has no purpose, and he can’t help but feel like he’s not meant to be here, like he’s destined for something _more_ , and that feeling builds up inside of him until there’s nowhere to go.

Mookie helps, a bit, he loves this kid, he loves him so much, but he has no idea what he’s supposed to _do_ about it. Hecuba is just as miserable as he is. She rushed into this, wanting a dad for Maevis, and Merle isn’t at all like her dead first husband. They’re both miserable here, sniping at each other and bickering constantly. And Merle is still so, so out of his depth as a dad, as a husband, as a cleric.

They’re both pushing, and something has to give. Hecuba is a better mom than he is a dad—Merle hates his job, has even managed to start to hate the beach, and he knows that he’s deadbeat.

They all deserve better. He leaves the divorce papers in a drawer for her to find, already signed, and then he leaves.

He’ll regret it, later, not doing this the right way, but he really thinks it’s for the best.

But whatever went wrong, it’s definitely not because he doesn’t have “So you’re going to be my husband, are you?” written on his arm.

It’s just a shitty match. Even soulmates can’t help with that.

* * *

**4\. Davenport**

Davenport doesn’t need a soulmate. He has his crew.

When he gets his memories back, he gets a tattoo for each of them. This world doesn’t have soulmates, but that doesn’t change anything, as far as he’s concerned.

He’s flown ships through the impossible and lived for over a century.

Nothing will ever change who his family is, not even a decade spent only able to speak his own name.

* * *

**5\. Taako**

Taako has always been of the opinion that soulmates are bullshit, anyways.

And it’s not just because his words are so boring that he barely bothers to remember what they even say. 

(It’s)

Why the fuck should he care about some stupid fake tattoo? Who decides this shit anyways? He’s not going to let some _words_ tell him what to do with his life.

He dates who he wants and wears full sleeves, because fuck soulmates anyways. He’s seen plenty of soulmates gone bad, and people refuse to leave because they’ve got this idea in their heads that soulmates are perfect and forever and that they can _fix things_ , even when they can’t, because some people are just shitty and the world screws people over like that.

And on the other hand, he’s seen plenty of happy couples with no marks, or mismatched marks, or scarred over marks. Sure, there’s the odd normal, happy soulmates like Carey and Killian, but those two are so normal it’s almost nauseating, because they’re just so fucking _happy_. (Their words are in Orcish and they think it’s the funniest thing ever, and Taako is _not_ about to admit he can’t read Orcish so he doesn’t understand the joke.)

(He’s also seen how devastated Magnus still is, because he lost _her_ , whoever she is, and it makes Taako determined never to be that vulnerable to pain like that.)

This person on Taako’s skin, whoever he is, is only going to disappoint. Or be disappointed, but who’s counting?

And then, of course, he _meets_ Kravitz and he’s a) trying to kill them b) really fucking hot, and c) the Grim Reaper. So that’s… a lot to unpack. He hears it when the guy is standing above them, basically planning on killing them all on some fucked up charges of, y’know, necromancy and dying and shit, which, while Taako has done lots of fucked up shit in his day, is not his jam.

So Taako just keeps rolling with it, or well, as well as he _can_ roll with it when he’s fucking paralyzed.

Cuz apparently his fucking soulmate is a crystal skeleton thing who got Merle’s arm chopped off, and is here to kill them and Noelle. Which, while Taako might admit that he and the guys have it coming, _Noelle_? Seriously?

Magnus fails to talk their way out of this one, so they’ve gotta roll initiative and fight this guy, and so what if Taako is deliberately keeping his mouth shut? He doesn’t even know if golems or whatever he is _have_ soulmates.

Merle dispels the paralysis, a doing his _job_ for once, and the Umbra Staff is right there and handy, so Taako scoops it up and points it at his fucking soulmate and says the first thing that comes to mind.

(He does, later take great pride in the fact that a servant of the Raven Queen has been running around with written on his arm for _years_.)

The guy fucking _freezes_ , and so hey, guess Taako knows if golems have soulmates now, but he just keeps talking, cuz like hell is he actually going to have a _conversation_ about this. “Hey, hey hey. I’m gonna get you into some tent porn. Let me get that name real quick so I know how to credit you in my tentacle porn I’m about to make with your body.”

And the guy’s utterly hilarious reaction to _that_ turn of phrase results in him just saying his name in response before Taako casts the spell. The guy’s staring at Taako like… he can’t believe his eyes or something, and to be fair, Taako’s pretty un-fucking-believable, but it’s still kind of freaking him out.

But they both just keep fighting like nothing’s happened: Taako restrains him with tentacles, Kravitz sets off a goddamn _bomb_ that nearly kills Taako, pretty much confirming that the guy doesn’t actually giving a shit.

And then Taako eats Merle’s arm to get some health back, and freaks the guy out so much that he fucking books it, and he’s pretty proud of himself.

It’s not like the guy seems to care anyways. (Although Taako’s pretty sure that he lets them off the hook so easily because of it, after the big fight with Legion.)

Whatever. He’s got no obligations to Kravitz. He’s not gonna change his opinions on soulmates overnight just cuz the Gorgeous Reaper flutters his eyelashes.

(He’s pretty torn between crowing about how his soulmate is an immortal nerd with the start of a tent-porn fic scrawled across his arm in Taako’s, frankly, _amazing_ handwriting, and never telling anyone about it ever because it’s _none of their business_.)

But… after Refuge… well…

The guy _is_ cute, and it’s just one date, that happens to double as a “convincing this guy not to destroy the entire town.” And then his umbrella tries to kill his fucking soulmate, and honestly, he’s a little pissed at it for that.

(When Lup comes back, he tells her _all_ about it, especially about how it’s literally carved in bone when Kravitz goes all skeletal. She appreciates it better than anyone else possibly could anyways.)

* * *

**5b. Kravitz**

Kravitz had died and never had a soulmate.

So finding one on his arm about ten years ago threw him through a serious loop.

The word choice really only made it worse.

* * *

**6\. Barry**

In his human form, Barry Bluejeans can’t see his mark. Fisher’s influence means that, even though it’s right _there_ , scarred over maybe, but _there_ , his brain can’t recognize it, and so Barry Bluejeans thinks he has no soulmate.

But the coin tells him otherwise.

When he’s in his lich form, it’s burned into the bone, clear and legible to him and no one else.

Lup’s flamboyant handwriting, with all the flourishes one might expect, reads.

And on her arm, when he finally, _finally_ sees her again, is his answer.

* * *

  **7\. Lucretia**

_Light_.

Lucretia comes back from defeating the Hunger, which she had not expected. Surely, it would have been a fitting ending to her story. A sacrifice, to atone for all the damage she has caused.

Instead… there is a train.

After… everything that follows, when Lucretia should be asleep, she finds it.

It’s long been a habit of hers to wear a close sleeved, wrist length shirt beneath her robes; in many worlds, it’s taboo to flaunt one’s marks, or taboo not to have any, or to have too many. It’s not here. Many people assume that there are words, scarred over, hidden by those sleeves. But Lucretia knows the truth. She has no words, no marks at all, not in this world.

So it’s a surprise, to say the least, when she pushes up the sleeve of her right arm, the one where her bracer is on, and sees a familiar mark around her wrist.

Six stylized birds, wings outstretched in flight, wrap around her wrist, beaks to tail in a perfect connection, and she can’t help but gasp.

Because she’s seen this mark before; it’s the mark that the IPRE crew had left on her, the first cycle they’d been in a world with platonic marks. It had faded at the end of that year, to be replaced by a woman’s neat, careful handwriting, running up the inside of her calve. It must have been ninety years since she’s seen it, but here it is again. Magnus’ eagle, Merle’s owl, Takko’s…

The strange giddiness at seeing the old mark again fades as she looks at it more closely.

Takko and Davenport’s marks are faded in color, like pieces of paper left in the sun too long. Lucretia would have realized this, had she been given a moment to think about it. What she had done should have more than shattered the bonds between her and those two. By all rights, they should be faded out, all color and lines gone. A condemnation on her own skin; she had not lost her soulmates through death, but because of her own actions.

The door to her quarters opens, and Lucretia looks up, not thinking to hide her wrist as she sees Lup entering.

“Lucretia?” Lup asks, her voice strangely echoing and hollow in her lich form. Lucretia never would have realized how much she had missed it; when she dreamed of finding Lup again, it had always been in her resplendent elvish form, not this skeletal creature of magic and death. But she smiles, despite her own exhaustion.

“Lup,” she says. Lup’s parrot was bright on her skin, a sign of forgiveness which she could not quite comprehend.

She’s still holding her wrist in her hands, and Lup sees it, because of _course_ she does well on that perception check.

She lunges forward, eager to see, because Lup has not changed a bit, and is as nosy as ever. “A soulmate, Lucretia? Why didn’t you—oh.”

“I… it just appeared,” Lucretia says. “I think it’s because of… you know. The train.”

“Mmm, Takko told me,” Lup says, and Lucretia can’t help but flinch at that name.

Skeletal fingers clasp around her wrist, a bony finger tracing over Takko’s parrot—once rich greens and yellows to contrast with the pinks and reds of Lup’s, and now faded pastels. Lucretia swallows.

“He’ll forgive you, don’t worry. He just needs time.”

“He shouldn’t,” Lucretia says, feeling every inch of those lost twenty years now. In terms of relative age, she’s now older than Merle. She’s fifty-five years old, and she feels every day of them. “I don’t deserve that.”

“Lucretia, babe,” Lup says, her thumb pressing against her own mark. It’s next to Takko’s, because of course it is. Lup connects to Barry connects to Davenport connects to Merle connects to Magnus connects to Takko connects to Lup. A perfect circle, broken because of her actions. “It’s not about deserving anything. He’ll forgive you.” She turns Lucretia’s hand over to find Davenport’s Albatross. “So’ll Dav.”

Lucretia feels her eyes watering. It has been the longest day ever; even longer than the day in that horrible world where they all had died, when she’d screamed, from far away, as six names, all down her back, had scarred over in one horrible moment. “Lup,” she whispers, about to fall apart.

“Holy shitballs,” Lup says. “Lucretia. _Look_.”

On the back of her hand is Fisher in watercolors; abstract and beautiful, another mark which she hasn’t seen in years.

Lucretia stares at it, a strange form of hope rising in her. “They’re… are they all back?” She whispers.

“Well, let’s find out!” Lup tugs at Lucretia’s robe. “C’mon!”

Laughing despite herself, her heart hammering in her chest, Lucretia divests herself of the robes she’s been wearing—she needs to disposed of them anyways, they’re torn and stained from this long, fateful day—and she and Lup begin to examine her body for the old marks.

There are no others for the crew; they’re encompassed perfectly by the circle on her wrist. But other marks from the years are there.

_Annabelle_ is sprawled in gorgeous handwriting across her collarbone. First words that she’s never heard spoken crisscross across her back. There are a few other names, but something warm unfurls in her as she touches _Annabelle_ ; the woman she’d loved and lost, during that awful year. It’s scarred over, of course; all of them are. All of them dead, consumed by the Hunger. A hundred years of soulmate scars.

But then, she notices her left arm.

She’s never had a mark on her left arm; it’s just been how things are, she’s never even considered it.

But now…

In a straight line, running from her collarbone to the inside of her wrist, is a series of brightly colored marks. There is a magnifying glass for Angus, a symbol in thief’s cant for Carey, a crossbow for Killian, a sphere for Avi, a scarred over music note for Johann. There are others that are scarred over—Cam, Maureen, other friends through the years—and others, she knows instinctually, who she hasn’t met yet.

This is a gift, she realizes, as she sinks to the floor, overcome with emotions, tears flowing freely, and Lup’s barely corporeal arms wrapped around her. A gift she in no way deserves, but JeffAndrew or someone has granted her. A reminder of loves, friends, and family lost, to be found, of ones she has, of ones she could have had.

Lucretia has a century of love, written on her skin.

And as she sits there, overcome with joy and sorrow and everything in between, she thinks she sees a parrot’s coloring grow brighter around her wrist.

**Author's Note:**

> Obligatory shout out to the art that really cemented that this was what I wanted to do: [found here](http://cryptism.tumblr.com/post/163070652379/this-soulmate-au-is-kravitzs-nightmare) , even though I ended up selecting a different line to leave on Taako, because I wanted it to play out slightly differently.
> 
> Additional shout out to another fantastic soulmate fic I read for this fic: I already had mine outlined when I read it, but this one is a lot longer than mine and fun in different ways, so I definitely rec it. It's _light, wine, and sweethearts_ by coffeecrowns, if you're interested! 
> 
> I hope you folks enjoyed it; leave me a comment and let me know what you think, or just come hang out with me on tumblr, where I'm @[secretlystephaniebrown](secretlystephaniebrown.tumblr.com).


End file.
